


don't kill the messenger

by Snowsheba



Series: a shipping challenge, Dave edition (ON HIATUS) [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Bro Dies, Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowsheba/pseuds/Snowsheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Dave Strider's world is destroyed and he rebuilds it on the faultiest of foundations,</p><p>but by the time he finds out he's too far dug in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't kill the messenger

**Author's Note:**

> Speedwrite in an hour. It's incredibly difficult to write a pairing with Gamzee that is even close to resembling healthy. I failed to do that, naturally.
> 
> I had posted this earlier but somehow a huge chunk of text was omitted.

Your name is DAVE STRIDER and your brother is lying dead and bloody on the floor of your apartment.

You would almost say he simply looks like he’s sleeping, to be honest. His face is still pristine and his glasses are eerily in place, placed just so on his nose, little triangular shields hiding his clementine eyes from the world. His baseball cap is ever present, his hair sticking out at strange angles ever so; in fact, the only difference to his normal appearance, you would say, is the dark redness of his chest where it’s been smashed in by a blunt instrument, the line of blood running from his nostrils and the edge of his lip, the fact his sword held in white-knuckled hands is coated with a strange indigo smear.

Yep, he’s dead. He is one hundred percent, positively-certainly-no-doubt-about-it dead. You feel like you should want to cry, but all you feel is numb, even as your phone comes out of your pocket and you dial the police.

Except you don’t dial the police. Instead, you text the first number you see, the first number that you think would maybe sympathize and maybe tell you what you should do next. Besides call the police, that is.

TG: my brother is dead on the floor what should i do

Your former roomie at college replies in a matter of seconds. Like he was waiting for your message. Like he knew.

CG: GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.  
CG: I TAKE THIS TO MEAN THAT YOUR BROTHER IS ACTUALLY DEAD.  
CG: UNLESS YOU’RE PLAYING SOME PRACTICAL JOKE LIKE YOU HUMANS DO ALL THE TIME, WHICH IS STUPID BUT YOU BULGESACKS ALWAYS THINK IT’S GODDAMN HILARIOUS WHEN THE VICTIM GETS THEIR UNDERWEAR ALL IN A TWIST.  
TG: karkat  
TG: my brother is dead on the floor what should i do  
CG: CALL THE  
CG: NEVER MIND, WE ALL KNOW YOU WON’T.  
CG: DAVE, WHAT I THINK YOU SHOULD DO IS STAY PUT, AND THEN WE CAN DO WHAT WE HAVE TO ONCE I GET THERE.  
CG: IN SHORT: DO. NOT. MOVE. OKAY?  
TG: yeah  
TG: yeah okay

Your phone slides from lifeless fingers as you hold it over the kitchen counter, and it hits the surface with a clatter. Then you sort of step over his body, minding where Bro’s blood seeps into the carpet and makes it wet and sticky and brownish red, and perch yourself on the edge on the futon. The same one he’d been sleeping in a few hours previous, in fact.

Karkat arrives without fanfare, quietly opening the door, quietly closing the door, exhaling heavily on seeing the body and coming over where you are completely still, knees drawn to your chest. His gray skin feels feverish to you when his hand comes to rest on your shoulder, and when it slips around and he is sitting next to you and holding you to him, somewhat, you finally feel a vague urge to cry. You sniffle instead, a few times, before standing up and pulling him with you as you view the body in front of you.

“We should call the police,” you say, and Karkat takes his phone out. You hear him rather than see him do it.

“Excellent fucking idea,” he says, and once you exit your room with a duffel bag of your stuff, it goes to his ear and he shuffles you out the door.

* * *

TT: Dave.  
TG: yeah  
TT: Would you mind elaborating on Bro’s location?  
TT: Mother is anxious to speak to him. She has something quite important going on, an experiment as far as I am aware, and requires his assistance.  
TG: hes not here  
TT: You’ve already said that. Multiple times.  
TG: he isnt  
TT: Dave, is there something you’re not telling me?  
TG: no  
TT: ...  
TT: If you say so.  
TT: Just remember that we are always here for you, brother dearest. Take care.  
TG: you too rose

EB: daaaaaaaave...  
EB: i think you’re lying to me.  
TG: im not  
EB: dad says he hasn’t heard from him in over a week!  
EB: and you know how often he’s chastising bro on how he raises you.  
EB: when will he be back from his trip?  
TG: dunno  
EB: are you okay, dave?  
EB: you seem kind of subdued.  
TG: im fine  
EB: are you sure?  
TG: yes  
EB: i don’t believe you.  
TG: okay  
EB: dave seriously. what is going on??  
EB: i’m your best friend, you can tell me!  
TG: theres nothing to tell  
EB: but you’re not acting like yourself, and i want to know why.  
TG: im fine  
TG: go talk to your gf or something k  
TG: im out

GG: dave you dont seem all right to me :(  
TG: im fine  
TG: go feed your dog you dont need to worry about me  
GG: okay..........  
GG: but you better believe im going to text you again mister! i will not accept this weird temperament of yours  
GG: if its a phase i still dont like it D:<  
TG: yeah okay  
TG: bye jade

* * *

 

The police are looking for you, to ask you what happened. They know it wasn’t you because your fingerprints or DNA or whatever are nowhere on or near the body, and also because you’re his younger brother, but they are also looking in child neglect shit. You don’t know what to do, and you still aren’t crying, and you still can’t summon enough effort to do anything other than listen to what Karkat tells you to do.

After you'd grabbed all the stuff you cared about from your room, the first thing he tells you to do is to follow him to a dumpy little thing of an apartment, more spacious than yours and actually very comfortable and pleasant, all things considered (then again, you could be sitting in the street and still be very pleased with where you were). Then he tells you to put your stuff by the door, then he tells you to stop staring, and then he tells you to say hello to his roommate.

Said roomie is Gamzee Makara, and when you look at him, with Karkat tensing and ready to spring into action if you do anything wrong, and you feel a twinge of pity in your chest. He’s just so dejected-looking, painfully thin shoulders almost poking through the fabric of his T-shirt and his polka-dotted pajama pants pooling at his ankles. He is literally the personification of the expression ‘all skin and bones’, and when his eyes, yellow oculars with black irises tinged with the indigo of his blood, meet yours, you feel like he can relate to what had happened to you.

So when Gamzee comes over to you and places rail-thin arms around your body, you cling to his cool skin and feel his ribs under your arms as you wrap them around him. Karkat evidently doesn’t quite know what’s going on, and to be honest, neither do you. Gamzee might, but then, you’ll never know.

Karkat loans you his couch to crash on, and then when he leaves for his day job, which he’d left to fetch you, it’s just you and Gamzee and you pass the time by attempting to learn Alternian alphabet because you have nothing better to do. You get as far as writing your own name when Karkat returns, and it’s only when he coughs discreetly into his fist do you realize Gamzee’s sort of draped over you, light and cool, as you etch your pencil into the paper on the tiled floor.

* * *

 

A few days pass, and Karkat pressures you into making yourself useful - so you take up cooking. You were never bad at it, not excellent maybe, but because Bro never cooked you’d picked up some tricks in order to make tasty food out of some truly nasty leftovers in the fridge. And so when you find all of these good, high-quality ingredients in Karkat’s kitchen, you go crazy and make some weird Italian dish you found online that tastes really, really good and smells really, really awesome (and you didn't taste like a quarter of the batch. Of course not). Gamzee eats half before you hide the rest for Karkat, who declares it ‘fucking awesome’ and makes you the cook of the time you are there. It’s in that way you’re integrated into their lives.

The two trolls are moirails, which means they sometimes have major feeling jams in their respite block (as they call rooms) and you are not, under any circumstance, allowed to enter. You’ve never understood pale relationships, but you’d looked up some videos online (it’s pale porn, apparently, and they come saddled with names like “jadeblood girl paps three juggalos and begs for more”), and you’d determined they were basically major cuddling sessions, something you might do with Rose when she gets her therapist on.

But because they were moirails, it was understood that in no way, shape, or form could you interrupt their bromance. So when Karkat came home and, on occasion, saw Gamzee sort of wrapped around you and you sort of dragging him around the kitchen as you cooked, he would sometimes get a little miffed, but never so much so that you couldn’t explain to him that you had literally done nothing; Gamzee just kept coming to you for whatever reason, and you weren’t sure what to make of it so you’d left it alone with enough distance to prod it with a stick.

It’s a legitimate excuse. From the way Karkat didn’t question it, Gamzee is just touchy-feely, all the time. You hardly think any of it when his arms close around you from behind, around your waist, as you’re frying stuff in the pan, and even when something brushes your neck you don’t think much of it. It’s only when Karkat opens the door and sees Gamzee’s face tucked into the nape of your neck, and when he makes some sort of high-pitched screeching noise that is probably something in Alternian, that you realize that holy _fuck_ there is a troll kissing your neck.

Karkat talks to you later about it, determines Gamzee’s flushed for you after a feelings jam. Fan-fucking-tastic. Coincidentally, it’s also the day the police release a report about your brother’s death, in that they know it was an indigoblooded troll.

You’d gone a few weeks without thinking about him, Bro that is; you’d gone and deceived yourself into thinking you’d always had this easy life with Karkat and his moirail, that all your sword training had come from watching shitty Youtube videos and your cooking skillz with a ‘z’ from TV. You had done so well that at the mere mention of his name, you’re violently reminded that John and Jade and most of all Rose are probably worried sick about you, and the image of your brother dead on the floor, but mostly that an indigoblooded troll living in the Houston area did it.

You cry for the first time about it then, and it’s Gamzee who holds you and reassures you in the night, whispering assurances in your ear and rocking you gently back and forth as you get snot and tears all over his shirt. You’re apologizing like a blubbering schoolgirl and he responds by nosing your hair; you’re hardly surprised when his lips eventually find yours, but surprise yourself when your grip on the front of his shirt tightens as you deepen the kiss.

You don’t surprise yourself when the overwhelming desire to pull out your sword that you haven’t used in a few days and gut him. After all, it’s obvious he did it, that he is the murderer.

But now you just have to bide your time, and pretend you don’t know even when it’s obvious you very much do.

* * *

TT: So you are telling me, that all of this time, Bro was dead?  
TG: yes  
TT: And you didn’t tell anyone?  
TG: i told some people here  
TT: Who?  
TG: theyve been housing me and shit  
TG: it dont matter  
TT: Dave, how are you still functional?  
TG: to be honest sis i have no fucking idea  
TG: but i know who did it  
TT: You are always welcome in our  
TT: Whatever you are planning on doing, do not do it.   
TG: why not  
TT: Do you understand all the consequences that will ensue from your foolhardy act?  
TG: no  
TG: and to be honest sis  
TG: i dont fucking care

EB: you mean your bro’s dead????????  
EB: jesus christ! why didn’t you say anything?!?!?!?!  
TG: dont use that much punctuation you look like a tool  
EB: who cares!!!!!!!!  
EB: dave have you been living with that all of this time???  
EB: why the fuck didn’t you tell any of us???  
TG: it  
TG: i dont know  
TG: but i didnt and now i did  
TG: im sorry  
EB: don’t apologize douchewaffle, i’m just saying!  
EB: i’m really worried about you! are you sure you’re going to be okay???  
TG: john  
TG: you are my main man and my bro for lyfe and all  
TG: but youre laying it on pretty thick  
EB: i am being sincere! i am really concerned!  
TG: i know  
TG: but you dont need to worry about me i know who did it  
EB: are you saying what i think you’re saying. because no.  
EB: no, dave. you are not going to go kill someone.  
TG: ha ha ha ha  
TG: too late imma do it  
EB: dave, no, don't do it.  
EB: i can't say it enough, whatever you're thinking is a really bad idea.

GG: dave that is a terrible idea!  
TG: its gonna happen  
TG: revenge will be all the sweeter knowing ive got him under my thumb  
GG: dave  
GG: dave please dont do anything stupid  
GG: dave?  
GG: dave you fucker did you leave  
GG: please please please dont do anything dumb  
GG: please dave  
GG: dont make a mistake you cant undo

CG: IF YOU LAY ONE FINGER ON HIM, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.  
TG: what are you talking about  
CG: DON’T PLAY DUMB, STRIDER.  
CG: YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TROLLS WORK, AND EVEN THOUGH I THINK YOU’RE DECENT UNDER ALL THE STUPIDITY IN YOUR GRAY MATTER,  
CG: YOU TOUCH HIM, YOU DIE.

You’re going to do it.

* * *

You can’t do it.

And as his cool lips press against yours and his sharp teeth sometimes cut your skin, with rage boiling in your veins and a keening pity and fear screaming in your mind, you find it hard to regret it at all.


End file.
